


For Your Own Good

by Miss_Pookamonga



Category: Incredibles (Pixar Movies)
Genre: And on the time I watched the entirety of Criminal Minds in reruns, Blame it on my true crime obsession, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Evelyn loves her brother but she has some issues she needs to sort out, Gen, I spend way too much time psychoanalyzing villains, One Shot, Siblings, Winston is a precious cinnamon roll who must be protected at all costs, character introspection, childhood flashbacks, sibling angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 00:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17970779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Pookamonga/pseuds/Miss_Pookamonga
Summary: "It's for your own good!" his sister yells. And with that one simple phrase, time comes screeching to a halt. / An insight into Winston's mind in the split second before he jumps from the plane.





	For Your Own Good

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the dialogue may not exactly match up with the movie - I originally posted this to FFN while Incredibles 2 was still in theaters, so I wasn't able to refer back to the actual scene while writing it.

* * *

“Sit down,” she hisses, her voice tinged with fury and a hint of desperation.  
  
The gears that have slowly been turning in Winston’s head since his sister wrenched him away from the crowd of supers and dignitaries begin to gather momentum, overcoming the temporary rust of…whatever induced his sudden brain fog back on the boat. Like keys turning a series of complex locks, several things click into place simultaneously. The giant screen, their abrupt escape, the summit members standing eerily frozen as if an invisible force was keeping them there…  
  
“What did you _do_?” Winston hurls at Evelyn accusingly, the answer already forming in the back of his mind, accompanied by a sick sense of dread.  
  
“It’s for your own good!” his sister yells.  
  
And with that one simple phrase, time comes screeching to a halt.  
  
It’s only a split second, but in that second everything Winston has ever known about his sister comes crashing into his consciousness. A tidal wave of memories flooding every corner of his brain until he’s drowning in a narrative he thought he’d carefully filed away piece by piece.  
  
Except now, for the first time in his life, the pieces are finally fitting together.  
  
That time at the county fair when he was five and she was eight and she made him order a vanilla ice cream cone instead of chocolate because vanilla was _her_ choice and they _had_  to have the same flavor. That time when he was eight and she was eleven, and his beloved hamster – the hamster she notoriously hated and openly told him was a “frivolous distraction” from his studying to win the math-a-thon – mysteriously disappeared. That time when he was twelve and she was fifteen, and she pleaded with him to drop out of drama club so he could do “something more challenging” because he was “too smart to waste his time playing make-believe,” and he turned down the lead role – the role he craved more than _anything_ – to obey her advice and join debate club instead. That time when he was fourteen and she was seventeen, and he brought home his first girlfriend, the captain of the freshman cheerleading squad, to dinner. The girlfriend who ultimately fell victim to Evelyn’s disapproving glares, the girlfriend who dumped him out of the blue two weeks later and then switched schools without explanation, the girlfriend he confronted Evelyn about after the fact, to which his sister’s response was merely a cold, hard stare that told him everything he needed to know about why said girlfriend suddenly walked out of his life without so much as a glance backward.  
  
There are many more times like these in his memory. More than he could possibly count, all adding up to an insurmountable sum, snowballing until the tangled mass of recollections is hurtling through his mind at a frightening pace. But every instance is held together by a common thread, a thread that is far more intricately woven into the fabric of his and Evelyn’s relationship than he initially realized. A thread constructed of the same five words spilling from her lips time and time again, stitching him tightly to her side so he would never be too far out of her reach.

  
_It’s for your own good._

The epiphany hits him in full force, an icy blast of reality threatening to topple the long-held perceptions of his very existence. The puzzle pieces, once hopelessly jumbled, are now falling into the their rightful places, at last forming the full picture he could never before see because he was far too close to it all to see clearly. Now, stepping away from the frame, he can finally view the image he was always meant to – a blazing warning sign made only brighter by the ever-constant flow of these moments, now memories. A warning sign that his precious sister was always standing precariously on the edge of a cliff, a warning sign he wishes he could’ve seen for what it was before their parents’ deaths finally thrust her over the edge into the abyss. A warning sign that foretold the damage she could possibly do, the damage that has now already been done.

He opens his mouth to speak, and time suddenly rushes back to full speed.  
  
“ _NO! _”__

He thrusts the escape door open and launches himself out of the plane without a second thought. And for the first time in either of their lives, the thread breaks.  
  
Winston thinks he hears Evelyn shriek his name as he falls, but it’s drowned out by the deafening roar of the plane’s engines and the sickening _thud_  of his body slamming against the side of the boat. When he finally overcomes the shock of the fall, he twists his body round, ignoring the scream of pain in his limbs, and stares up at the plane as it ascends farther into the clouds.  
  
She never would have let him go. Not by her own choice. He knows that now.

  
She never knew how to.


End file.
